May 2023
We are currently looking for two different postdoctoral researchers. One is a community ecologist focusing on plant-coleopteran interactions in agricultural field margins in France (you can see the details here). The other one is on species distribution modelling and risk assessment in plant health (details here). Application deadlines are June 15th and 16th.
August 2022
We found our ideal candidate for the PhD thesis! We will welcome Benoit Penel to our team, starting in October. Stay tuned for more details!
June 2022
We are looking for a new doctoral student! The title of the thesis would be "Effects of agricultural practices on the diversity of field margin beetles: applying approaches from metabarcoding and community ecology to large-scale biodiversity monitoring". If interested, you can find more information in English or French. Application deadline: July 15th 2022.
January 2022
Our lab has two big research projects starting up this year: an ANR called AgriBiodiv, which will be taking advantage of an existing biodiversity monitoring effort in France (500+ survey sites around agricultural fields in continental France) to study coleopteran diversity and its relationships to plant diversity and to agricultural practices. The second project is funded by the Ecophyto II plan, which is aimed at reducing the use of pesticides in the long run. Here we will analyze links between different classes of pesticides and plant diversity (including functional diversity), and enhance our understanding of agricultural practices that are the most biodiversity-friendly. Both projects benefit from extensive collaborations with Guillaume Fried, a group of integrative taxonomists at the CBGP (including Gael Kergoat and Julien Haran), a team of specialists in citizen science and science communication at the museum (lead by Emmanuelle Porcher), and collaborations with agroecologists such as Adam Vanbergen and Jean-Philippe Guillaumin. As always, students and postdocs are doing the heavy lifting. You can find more about them here:
Isis Poinas, PhD student with me and Guillaume Fried
Laura Henckel, Postdoc with me and Jean-Philippe Guillemin
October 2021
Wow! It has been a long time since I have updated my news, so I guess they are not that new anymore! I'll do better in the future...
Excited that the CLCPRO project lead by Cyril Piou is starting up, to look at the potential risks associated to the Desert Locust. As part of this project, Fanny Herbillon is joining our team and starting a thesis on this very topic, and the links between climate change and Desert Locust outbreaks in northern Africa. Welcome to the CBGP Fanny!
August 2017
I just moved back to France to reintegrate the French national agricultural research institut (INRA) in Montpellier (CBGP). Looking forward to doing more applied science, and finding new students and collaborators!
June 2015
Victoria Granger's article on mapping multi-facetted diversity indices is finally out in Methods in Ecology and Evolution! This was part of Victoria's thesis. In this paper she explored conceptual and practical problems related to making maps and extrapolating diversity spatially, compared a direct and indirect approach to interpolation, and discusses in extent further research that is needed to fill in some of the methodological gaps that are still blocking spatial analyses of diversity. It is an interesting paper, check it out!
The Journal of Biogeography just published on their Early View an article that highlights the pervasive effects of using inappropriate simulation strategies to test species distribution models (SDMs). In it, two papers that I co-authored with David Kaplan are promoted, as well as an R package that Boris Leroy developed applying these ideas. The package is presented in our recently accepted software note in Ecography.
Our software note describing a new R package allowing for the simulation of virtual species is now out in Ecography. The package applies the most up to date techniques to simulate virtual species and test species distribution models. Check it out!
May 2015
Luke Bassett will be joining my lab to start a master's degree at VIMS in August 2015. Congratulations Luke on your recruitment at VIMS!